Attach to dotnet.exe extension for Visual Studio 2017 & 2019 now has a new version 1.0.0.1. As the version number indicates, only a small thing has changed: The extension manifest had problems with its dependencies, causing issues when trying to install the extension to VS 2019 Preview.

Unfortunately the extension is still not available through the Visual Studio’s extension marketplace, but I hope to have it there in the following week.

Background

Just a quick recap and reasoning for the extension: There’s usually many dotnet.exe processes. Attaching Visual Studio’s debugger to the correct one can be hard. This extensions aims to solve the issue by displaying the actual .DLL of the dotnet.exe process.

GrazeDocs is a new open source static documentation site generator. GrazeDocs converts your Markdown files into full-blown static HTML-pages which you can host anywhere. GrazeDocs uses Razor for themes and it is available as a .NET Core Global Tool.

Features

Here’s a list of few interesting features provided by GrazeDocs:

Clean and light default theme

Automatically generated table of contents

Live preview

Live previews is one of the standout features: Live Preview automatically opens a browser with your published documentation site. Every time you update the documentation, the site is automatically updated. You don’t have to manually publish your site to make sure your site looks correct. The Live Preview is done using SignalR.

Background

What is an alias and what you can do with them? Aliases can be used to shorten commands. If your application provides a “help” command, you can provide a shorter alias “h” for running it.

Alias Engine can also be used to provide alias feature for the end user. Your application can provide a fixed set of commands like “help”, “show”, “create” and the user of your application can create aliases for executing the commands.

UWP.MDI is a new library which provides MDI (Multiple document interface) support for UWP applications. The library is completely open source and available with MIT license.

Background

MDI (Multiple Document Interface) was popular user interface paradigm in Windows Forms era. MDI allows one window to host multiple child windows. Each window can be resized and moved around.

When WPF was released, it didn't contain support for MDI interfaces and the situation didn't change when WinRT and UWP were released.

UWP.MDI has two targets:

To provide comprehensive MDI support for UWP applications.

To provide MDI support in such a way that those familiar with Windows Forms' MDI support feel at home.

Getting started

Getting started with UWP.MDI aims to be simple:

Create a blank uwp application

Add MDIContainer into the MainForm

Add UserControl

Show UserControl by creating a new instance of it and calling MyUserControl.Show()

The easiest way to get learn more is to clone the project repository (https://github.com/mikoskinen/UWP.MDI) and to launch the sample application. The sample contains the MDI container and couple child windows.

Known issues

The library has few known issues. Main thing is making sure that everything works nicely with your MVVM framework of choice. The UWP.MDI library is implemented in such a way that you can continue using for example Caliburn.Micro, but there’s currently no available sample for that.